Double Girder Crane 1

Location

Country: Korea, Republic of (South Korea)
City: Seoul
Place: British Embassy

Francesca Simon’s abstract painting, Double Girder Crane 1, references the view from her London studio. Finding herself looking out over a construction site for the new Crossrail addition to Tottenham Court Road Station, Simon was forced into an unwitting collaboration with her industrial surroundings. Jettisoning the colours and textures of the stone of her native Yorkshire, she began to work with the concrete and metal building materials on the site. In Double Girder Crane 1, the shapes, angles and tones suggest a crane in motion – a tipping box in which a flash of metallic yellow enlivens the mainly grey industrial landscape. Simon’s abstract paintings have a close connection to reality and her process has been described as an excavation or the unearthing of something from something else. She works in layers – painting several works on top of each other – sometimes allowing the lower layer to be exposed. 

The academic Niko Munz commented on this body of work to say: ‘Simon’s art becomes a metaphor for the construction and deconstruction processes of the building site: While teams working on the Crossrail sites are uncovering medieval burial grounds, leftover from times of plague, her paintbrush is her shovel. Outside, there is a physical quarrying – a deconstruction – needed for construction. Inside, Simon’s art parallels this: for the artist, the act of painting is a mental archaeology, through which her art can be constructed.’ Simon’s geometric paintings have a close connection with the British contribution to constructivism, in particular with the work of both Ben Nicholson and Victor Pasmore. In its concern with archaeology and the passage of time, her work also finds echoes in that of more recent abstract painters concerned with reductive, geometric systems such as Charley Peters and Natalie Dower.

Painter and etcher Francesca Simon was born in Singapore. She studied Law at Newnham College, Cambridge in the 1970s and later went on to graduate with an MA in Fine Art Central Saint Martins in 2010, having gained a BA in Fine Art at City & Guilds of London Art School in 2005. Her painting career began in the 1990s. She won a travel award from the Skinners Company in 2004 and a Cass Art Painting Prize in 2010. Recent solo exhibitions of Simon’s work include 'Navigations' at Ryedale Folk Museum, in the North York Moors National Park (2017); and 'Site Lines' at Beardsmore Gallery, London (2014). She has taken part in several group exhibitions since 2006, more recently in 'The Tim Sayer Bequest: A Private Collection Revealed' at The Hepworth, Wakefield and the Turps Gallery 'Summer Mix', London (both 2016). Simon lives and works in London and Glaisdale, Yorkshire.

Places

Subjects

abstract

Materials & Techniques

acrylic (paint), canvas, wood, acrylic painting

Artist

Francesca Simon (1953 - )

Title

Double Girder Crane 1

Date

2013

Medium

Acrylic on canvas on wood

Dimensions

height: 110.00 cm, width: 144.00 cm

Acquisition

Presented by the artist, January 2015

Inscription

verso, upper right: Francesca Simon / Double Girder Crane 1. 2013 / acrylic on birch plywood panel, cotton duck

Provenance

gift from the artist, 2015

GAC number

18627